there was some discussion about how the saint louis arch was a symbol of white supremacy and like sure, tear the fucker down, but like it dont even make the top ten list for places in the us that should be taken down. heres my list, feel free to disagree.
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stone mountain. its like confederate mt rushmore.
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mt rushmore. i dont even need to explain this one.
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the national mall. the whitehouse, congress building, washington monument, lincoln monument, jefferson monument, arguably the arlington cemetery and mt vernon, basically just all of dc and the parts of virginia that used to be a part of it. the whole city is a monument to white supremacy and i would love to see the majority black residents vote on what should be torn down
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the ivy league universities. harvard, yale, princeton, etc. the ivy league schools in particular created a class of ultra wealthy white upper class that can only be gotten rid of by abolishing the schools that created them.
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guantanamo bay, technically in cuba, de facto under american control. now that i think about it critically this is probably worse than mt rushmore but like im not changing the orders, I already committed.
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the alamo. the people who died here fought for slavery, like nations are bad and all but the land stolen from mexico in 1848 has caused a lot of material harm to the latine community and the american south west should be returned to mexico.
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hoover dam. im not saying hydro power is entirely bad, but like the whole region its sustaining shouldnt exist, las vegas shouldnt exist, even if you got rid of the livestock that makes up the majority of the farming along the colorado, growing vegan food here wouldnt be worth it. this region of the united states sustained by hoover dam is overcapacity, mexico doesnt get nearly enough water, not trying to make a malthusian argument here but maybe dont build suburbs in the desert?
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niagra falls. total shithole, stripmalls everywhere, the place should be a national park, the canadian side is actually worse. not even opposed to the hydropower here, just think everything else about it is just awful, no wonder why so many people commit suicide here.
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la river. YOU TURNED A RIVER INTO CONCRETE! im sure theres a lot of shit in la that deserves destruction for its societal or historical harm, but like this shit is worse than anything i can think of in la. the car culture there is too abstract to put on the list, the beverly hills are fine with me because hasan lives there, maybe skid row, but yall literally paved a river.
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disneyworld. i had to mention florida. im glad the state is going to be submerged underwater due to climate change. there's just so many bad places here that deserve to sink. the villages, the maralago, jacksonville, the cuban expat community that left during castro. the whole state is like a nursing home having a rave on vicodin. but disneyworld, it elicits a poisonous amount of nostalgia, look at the star wars, and look at the amusement ride based off the song of the south, go see anamatronic trump that was clearly made to be hillary clinton and had to be redesigned last minute, eat the food that would be illegal to sell in any civilized country, adults that go here for fun need re-education, like something is broke in them.
well thats my list.
See people say that but I never know what this actually means.
Indigenous people were running “the USA” before euros came here, they can easily do so again, no differently from places like Algeria or Vietnam.
No question about that but the population distribution and general situation is slightly different than pre-colonial contact, so the notion that we can just role back to that seems a bit silly.
I don't think the Algerian or Vietnam comparisons are very apt given those as more colonial than settler-colonial projects.
Algeria had a 10% French population and was considered legally part of France. Settler-colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy are all heads that belong to the same hydra, and ignoring any of them dooms any socialist project to failure. The indigenous comrades I listen to (@redfalconFNI is a good one) don’t advocate expelling all settlers, just the ones who refuse to follow the rules.
That's quite a bit smaller than the 98% non-indigenous population of the US. Obviously I'm not saying we should ignore settler-colonialism, but I don't buy any as workable of these supposed solutions that involve anti-democratic transfer of total sovereignty somehow to a small, currently marginalized component of the population. There's no conceivable road there and if it somehow were magiced into existence it'd last all of 2-weeks before settler (once again, the overwhelming majority of the population, + immigrants) backlash unraveled the whole thing.
So when someone says land back, I don't know what they mean because they can't mean that and be taken seriously.
Somewhat tangential but this seems like gnostic nonsense. These are often capable of existing independent of one another and there is no shadowing actor acting behind the scenes to manifest these things as part of some agenda.
https://www.shareable.net/podcasts/the-response-decolonial-marxism-with-sungmanitu-bluebird/
Okay, I've listen to the podcast and it doesn't really address my comments until the end where Sungmanitu states land back is
I just don't understand how this communal ownership can be construed as land back or indigenous sovereignty, as nearly every community will be majority non-indigenous, and if they have they ownership, it seems like they'll be able to exercise it as they see fit. It seems you can have communal ownership or indigenous sovereignty but not both.
Yeah I'm not a Marxist, something like this anarchist indigenous response to unqualified 'land back' I find way more meaningful and workable.
National socialism it is then.
Or you know, any of a number of alternatives
It means land back. What that means is up to the people the land is given back to.
See that doesn't help me because I don't know what "give" is supposed to mean. Under the current paradigm, ownership of real property is tied to the states monopoly on violence and it's ability to enforce the rights of landholders. If the state gives all the land back there's no longer any state to give all the land back and enforce those property rights.
It's kinda like that Douglas Adams joke about God disappearing in a puff of logic.
It depends. I'm not indigenous or descended from indigenous North or Central Americans. So it's honestly not up to me to tell you what land back means. You'll have to ask them. I have, and I largely agree with what I hear when I do. But I'm not here to represent indigenous interests, that's the last thing anyone needs, another white colonizer telling people what's good for indigenous folks. They want land back, it's the right thing to do, I support it. What that support means and how they would like to see it manifest is up to them. I'm here to do it alongside them, and am when asked and presented with opportunities to do so, but I'm not here to explain it to you. Sorry.
I guess to me that sounds more like just considering oneself a ally to indigenous folks as opposed to actually supporting a specific program.
I don't think there is one specific program though. There are many different groups in the US who deserve their land back. It means something different to all of them. And within members of that group. So there's not really one solid answer. If there's some land back movement in your area go find out how you can help there. That's basically all I got for you